CASE STUDY: What you can learn about organizing content when Web techies do a site makeover

By Debbie Weil [from May 28, 2003 issue]

What happens when a bunch of Web techies get together and relaunch their site? They spend months discussing information architecture, tableless site layouts and page load time. End result? A sleek new site, loaded with content but easy to use.

I went behind the scenes with SitePoint's founder and principal, Matt Mickiewicz, to find out what the not-so-techie marketer could learn from the makeover of this widely-respected site. Its tagline: "Empowering Web developers since 1997."

His top tip: look at the traffic on your current site. If visitors are consistently beating a path to one content area while ignoring others, you're getting a not-so-subtle hint.

Background & business model
Matt started SitePoint as a one-page site on Geocities in 1997, calling the page "Webmaster Resources." Subsequently he purchased Webmaster-Resources.com and later it became SitePoint.com.

Principal sources of revenue for the company are ad sales, software sales, print book sales and big-ticket Web design, primarily for Australian clients. The company has a split staff with Matt in Canada and the other eight members of the team in Melbourne, Australia. (Matt declined to assign percentages to each revenue stream. See bottom of page for an interesting case study on SitePoint from MarketingSherpa.)

SitePoint publishes two e-newsletters (SitePoint Tribune and SitePoint TechTimes) with a combined circulation of over 100,000. Over 1,000 articles from the newsletters comprise most of the site's content.

What drove the redesign: three goals

If you've been involved recently with a site relaunch, this may make you feel better. Despite being guided by expert hands, SitePoint's redesign "took months, costs tens of thousands of dollars and launched several months late," Matt said.

SitePoint was hearing from visitors that they couldn't find the content they were looking for and that pages often took too long to load. "Frequently, even we couldn't find a particular article without using the search function," Matt admits.

He likens the changes in information architecture to "pruning the branches of a tree, getting rid of the weak ones, to make everything stronger overall."

I'm going to leave an analysis of the code behind the new site to the more technically inclined. You can right-click on the home page (if you're using Windows) and admire it. Looks clean to me.

Instead I will focus on how the new design and layout work together to improve organization of the content - and not coincidentally, improve SitePoint's rankings in Google search results.

Matt told me that the usability expert most influential to the SitePoint team was Steve Krug, author of Don't Make Me Think.

The thesis of Krug's book is exactly that: make it as easy as possible for visitors to find what they want on your site.

Improved search engine rankings plus six times as much traffic from Google

Before the redesign SitePoint's content was spread across four different domain names. SitePoint.com was the hub. WebmasterBase.com offered Build Your Site Articles.
eCommerceBase.com focused on how to Profit From Your Site. PromotionBase.com carried the marketing articles.

The redesign put everything under SitePoint.com. This has increased the site's page rank because there are now more incoming links to a single domain name. (Google's algorithm relies heavily on the number of inbound links to a particular domain.) As an example, ten thousand links spread out between four domains is less effective in boosting page rankings than 5000 links to one domain name.

The result of higher page rankings is greatly increased traffic from Google. "Google now represents the source of thirty percent of our traffic vs. five percent before the redesign," Matt said.

In addition, by getting rid of tables in the page design and using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) instead, the source code is cleaner and isn't littered with <tr> and <td> tags. "The search engines love this!" Matt said.

How the new layout & design make the content more accessible - and profitable

Take a moment to click on the Before (loads slowly) & After of the home page. Then come back and read on...

No matter what your product or services or the focus of your company, SitePoint's new home page offers some great tips on how to organize and present content.

Content Tip #1

Keep your basic navigation simple and intuitive.

Three wide navigation tabs across the top delineate the three major content areas of the site: articles, our books and forums.

Then, to make much of the "articles" content accessible, dozens of text links run down the left.

You'll note that the first three sets of links (Before You Code, Design and Layout, Client Side Coding) are visible above the fold - depending on the size of your screen. These are clearly related to Web site development.

Only when you scroll much farther down do you come across Site Strategy, Before You Launch (which includes Promotion) and Sell Your Services. These are the less popular content areas identified by SitePoint's analysis of site metrics (page views, drop offs, etc.).

In contrast, the old home page has what looks like a "simpler" organization. Running down the left-hand side are the headers Build, Profit, Promote, Tools, Forums. Looks nice and clean, but it didn't speak to what visitors were looking for.

Takeaway: don't be afraid to put lots of text links on your home page as long as they are organized in a way that makes sense to your visitors.

Content Tip #2

Use clean, well-organized design to visually explain where you are and what you can do on each page of your site

SitePoint does this well on all their pages. Take a peek at the Before & After versions of an articles page below.

Every one of the new articles pages includes clearly defined areas that promote SitePoint's books and software - plus free offers. You are always being prompted to buy but in a contextually appropriate way.

Note that SitePoint's free offers are always visible. Stripped across the top of every page is an offer to download four free chapters or download the freelancer's design kit. They rotate.

Knowing where to find stuff when you come back for a return visit is key to a usable (and profitable) site.

Content Tip #3

Use more text and fewer graphics to stimulate click-throughs from visitors

The new design enabled SitePoint to remove all banner and tower ads and replace them with Google Adwords-like text ads. "These have proven to be a sell-out," Matt told me.

Text ads and text offers work. Period. If you're not trying them, you should be.

Results of the makeover

Matt says page views per visitor have jumped by 28 percent and monthly revenues are up. More results to come...

BONUS TIP:

Don't battle with your site visitors
Amy Lasley, chief designer of KISS Computing (and designer of WordBiz.com as well as the new layout of WordBiz Report), says her company has just finished the sixth major overhaul of its site in six years.

While Lasley admits that she "cringes" at some of the earlier iterations, she's "proud that the site gets better with each rebirth. Site metrics drive every bit of improvement. By reviewing our metrics consistently over time, our visitors have told us loud and clear what they want: Portfolio. Portfolio. Portfolio!" (The current site incorporates examples of KISS' work on almost every page.)

Her tip is simple: "Stop battling with your visitors, stop forcing them to read the content you think they should and start putting the content they crave right on the home page."

Useful Links

Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug

Matt Mickiewicz's review of Don't Make Me Think

SitePoint's well-organized e-newsletter archives

How SitePoint mixes competing revenue streams (case study in MarketingSherpa)

© 2003 WordBiz.com, Inc. May not be reprinted without permission.